Erich sat there smoking his cigarette in the tropical rain that threatened to wash away the flames of the battle that continued to wage on.
And though the intensity of the fighting continued, it would have to do so without his men. And the men who fought by his side.
Stretched brought men barely old enough to be considered as such out of the rubble. Some still breathing, others zipped up in body bags.
Nobody wanted to say it, but the operation had been Pyrrhic at best. They had opened a path for the 5TH Combined Arms division to push straight into Manilla, preventing reinforcements from arriving to the front.
And they had done so at great cost. Over half of the Battalion's 800 men were Wounded, Killed, or Missing in Action. And while the majority of that half would survive, many of them would never be able to lift another rifle, or march to the beat of cadence again in their lives.
